Item: VMware vCenter
Rating: 10
Author: Adam Friedli

Overall Satisfaction with VMware vCenter Server

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

vCenter Server is used for the internal infrastructure. It is also used at numerous clients with only two or so using Hyper-V instead. It is a very scalable and easy to use platform for virtualization. Maintaining the infrastructure is also easy to deal with. It's been a fantastic tool to help clients go from a physical environment to a virtual one, and we haven't had anyone regret the decision.

Pros and Cons

Pros

High Availability. It's simple to get an HA cluster set up and to maintain it. The failovers happen seamlessly and have definitely helped clients throughout various issues.
Resource Management. vCenter is very good at managing resources and balancing load to keep everything running well.
Support. Any time VMware support has been consulted, the experience has been fantastic. Support is always one of the most important aspects of a product, and VMware doesn't disappoint.

Cons

Licensing. I understand that a company is motivated to do what is best for its business, but some of the licensing model changes have come off as greedy. A more recent one was specifically designed to combat the usage of extremely high core count server CPU's coming out now. Getting hosts in a dual socket configuration used to be the sweet spot for value, but this change will most likely upset that option.

Return on Investment

Clients who have switched to vCenter Server have not been disappointed. This has helped their viewpoint of the company and services.
It has also helped maintain a recurring schedule of hardware upkeep as business es need to expand. This is the case with any managed hardware, but keeping everything virtual makes this simpler to deal with.

Alternatives Considered

Hyper-V

Hyper-V is not a bad product by any means, and it does have the benefit of not costing money for the software itself since it comes with the OS. That being said, it did start quite far behind VMware in features when it first came to market. Microsoft has been catching up, and many features that make VMware a no-brainer decision over Hyper-V have been getting added. As of right now, I still prefer VMware over Hyper-V. But, Microsoft is constantly improving Hyper-V, so they are another option to keep in mind.

Support Rating

VMware support has always been fantastic and they have been invaluable in solving tougher issues that have been run into. Most of the time, any oddities encountered are fixed by available updates. This can be deduced by support quickly with logs within vCenter. We have not run into something yet that support was unable to help with. They either have a solution already, or they are able to find one quickly.

Key Insights

Do you think VMware vCenter delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with VMware vCenter's feature set?

Yes

Did VMware vCenter live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of VMware vCenter go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy VMware vCenter again?

Yes

Other Software Used

ConnectWise Automate (formerly LabTech), ConnectWise Manage, Veeam Backup & Replication

Likelihood to Recommend

I feel that vCenter Server is a great option no matter the size of the company. They have a wide range of license levels, and the ones with less features can work well for a smaller company. Not everyone needs all of the dynamic load balancing options, for example. But, it can't be overstated how useful it is to have multiple physical servers in a virtual environment instead. If someone only has one or two server, maybe virtualization in general is not a good fit. But if the savings on power and maintaining physical machines makes sense, going virtual should definitely be looked into. VMware has been a leader in the field for years, and the quality of their product shows why this is.

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A Flexible Virtualization Platform That Fits the Needs of Small to Enterprise Businesses